


Cheap Shots

by ilcuoreardendo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Always Female Sam, F/M, Female Sam, Female Sam Winchester, Gen, Gender or Sex Swap, Human Sacrifice, Magical Bond, Paganism, Protective Gabriel, Stanford Era, Trickster Gabriel, Tumblr: sabrielation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 18:31:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1788976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilcuoreardendo/pseuds/ilcuoreardendo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>In all his years playing trickster, Gabriel had been given a number of tributes. More than he knew what to do with, really. Okay, the fatted calves got tiresome pretty fast and he’d usually drop them off at a needy village, but the booze and the sweetmeats could make his day. His favorite offerings, however, were those that came in young, nubile packages that were just so very eager to please their god. (He’d always been a creature of hedonistic impulse, even back when he was waylaid by the trappings of archangel duties.)</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cheap Shots

**Author's Note:**

> I'd been wanting to write something that involved Sam having always been the opposite sex; this was my chance. I'm wondering if there will be more....
> 
> Written and originally posted at my [Tumblr](http://ilcuoreardendo-fic.tumblr.com). For May's Sabrielation prompt "flowers."
> 
> Give me a follow for more Sabriel and a number of other things.

* * *

 

 _Oh, God_. Dad and Dean were never going to let her live this one down. They were going to lock her in her room and throw away the key. She’d be lucky if she got to come out for meals. She could kiss any thought of college goodbye.

On the other hand, she could die a grisly death and then none of it would matter… .

She pulled at the ropes around her wrists, her ankles; they held fast, binding her to the altar. She’d done little more than muss the flower display, bunch the altar cloth, and make the skimpy shift that the coven had called a dress ride up her thighs until she was nearly flashing the circle her bare ass.

She dropped back against the stone, breathing hard, her head swirling with whatever Roy?—Rob?—Roger? (his name was going to be Dickless when she got through with him) had slipped into her drink.

And the night had begun so well, too. It was just a little outing, by herself, to celebrate the arrival of her acceptance letter to Stanford. A little bit of normalcy in the sea of crazy that was her life. That’s  _all_  she wanted. Was it too much to ask?

She’d waited until dad was deep in a conversation with Johnnie Walker and Dean was absorbed in a Star Wars marathon before slipping out of her window and heading for town. Her fake ID had gotten her through the door of the bar, a quick game of pool had gotten her some cash for drinks, and a few well aimed smiles had taken care of the rest.

And that was the  _last_ time she was ever letting a guy buy her a drink….

Speak of the devil.

Dickless passed by the head of the stone and she snarled at him, enjoyed the frisson of pleasure in her belly as he hurried past, joining his coven in their circle in the center of the grove. They began chanting, their voices energetic, but so low she could barely make out a word or two. Something about sacrifice.

And wasn’t that just great?

She took a deep breath. The thick, heady odor of the flowers adorning the altar settled in her nose, her mouth. She twisted her wrists, fingers on her right hand straining again for the knot digging into her skin. She’d loosened it and could slip the tip of her forefinger through the loop, but the rope was slick and her hands were starting to go numb.

The chanting stuttered and dropped off. The night filled with silence, thick, warm and oppressive before a breeze picked up, smelling like sweet grasses, like water and the clean air after a storm. A figure stood in the archway created by two ancient looking trees. It was human shaped; though, for a moment, Sam could swear the air behind it flickered and wavered like something massive was hovering just out of sight, in shadow.

She stilled and hoped that she wasn’t about to become dinner for whatever these people had summoned.

 

 

In all his years playing trickster, Gabriel had been given a number of tributes. More than he knew what to do with, really. Okay, the fatted calves got tiresome pretty fast and he’d usually drop them off at a needy village, but the booze and the sweetmeats could make his day. His favorite offerings, however, were those that came in young, nubile packages that were just so very eager to please their god. (He’d always been a creature of hedonistic impulse, even back when he was waylaid by the trappings of archangel duties.)

So when he got to the grove, where a group of overly eager pagans were chanting praises, he was more than pleased to see the figure stretched out across the flower laden stone, hair unbound, tanned skin highlighted by a thin, white shift.

He paused in the shadows, looked again. Her limbs were lashed to the sides of the stone, her legs bared from struggling. There was fear in her eyes. Not the anticipatory awe of the willing sacrifice, but true, raise-your-hair fear.

Swearing under his breath, he stepped into the grove, into the light, watched the girl watching him.

One look toward the robed crowd and they fell silent. Expecting, waiting.

He approached the altar. The heady odor of columbine, jasmine and bachelor button wafted up to greet him. And beneath the sweetness of flowers was the warm, salt scent of young woman, pissed off and scared. Scared, but not terrified.  _Hm_.

"What’s your name, kiddo?"

She eyed him for a moment, lips pressed tight, before answering. “Sam.”

No surname, she obviously knew enough not to give it. “Hunter?” He grinned as she ducked her head. “Well, Sam, seems you got into a bit of a tangle.”  
  
“No thanks to your followers,” she said, snapping each word off at the end.

“Would-be worshippers,” he said. “They don’t follow me. I sure as hell don’t lead them.”

"So you just take up their sacrifices every once in a while?"

"Only," he said, "what is willingly given." He raised his eyes to the coven leader. It didn’t take more than a nudge of the human’s brain to understand he had… _drugged_  and dragged Sam to the altar. “You and I are going to have a conversation. Later. For now, get out.” The thread of power in his voice wound its way through the grove, made the trees shiver, the ground tremble.

The coven scrambled to obey and he turned back to Sam, who stared at him. He stared back, blinked as something caught his eye; he looked again, past the surface, to the bright, swirling mass that was the girl’s soul. There was a certain shade of light in the depths, a particular resonance that sang in his ears. It took a moment to realize what he was seeing, hearing. How had he not noticed?

Lucifer’s  _vessel_.  _His_  sacrifice was Lucifer’s vessel. Sam  _Winchester_. The human, meant to serve as a vehicle for the Apocalypse, was tentatively _bound_ …to  _him_ , tangled up in the ephemeral ropes of the spell those yahoos had cast. All at once a weight, that he’d only peripherally been aware of pressing on him as the world turned toward the next millennium, seemed lighter.

He could work with this.

"Are you…going to untie me?" Sam leaned on her elbows, straining against the ropes. Sweat glistened in the valley between her breasts.

It would be a pleasure to work with this.

"Of course." Instead of snapping the ropes free with a thought, he slipped them from her by hand. Letting his fingertips brush gently over the skin of her wrists, her ankles, he healed the rope burns, and then, with the faintest current of his grace, soothed her anxiety.  _I’m not going to hurt you_.

“Thanks,” she said, eyeing him curiously, and sat up. But the movement was too fast and she pitched forward.

“Think you lost your sea legs, kiddo.” He caught her with ease, the long, lean line of her body pressed against him, soft and warm and smelling very, very good. Like  _his_. The magic rushed between them, the ebb and flow of a tide, strong due to their nearness. If not completed, it would grow weaker when they parted, but the bond would remain until and unless he broke it. “Think you can stand? Or should I call you a carriage? Though, it’s after midnight, you might have to put up with a pumpkin.”

“M’not Cinderella,” she said. “I can stand.” And she did, leaning back lightly on the altar, staring at his face, half-dazed. “You’re strange.”

“Well, little hunter, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle cast iron?”

“I don’t—“ She fell silent, cheeks turning pink. “I just meant—I wasn’t expecting—you don’t seem like other…  _Who_  are you?” Her pupils were blown wide. She was near to rambling now, running on empty, the adrenaline wearing off.    
  
“You can call me Loki,” he said, enjoying the “o” of surprise her mouth made. “And you’re about to become intimate with the forest floor, so let’s get you home before that happens.”

With a snap of his fingers, they were in her bedroom, a squat, dark little hole in a house that had seen better days.

She dropped like a stone to her bed, leaning against the headboard. He took a turn through the room, eyeing the miscellanea of her décor: a silver knife on her bureau, an old family photo on a shelf, textbooks stacked neatly on her desk and, wedged between them, an open envelope. He pulled it out, heard her make a noise of protest.  

“ _Welcome to Stanford_ ,” he read. “A little hunter with brains—“

“I’m  _not_ ,” she spat, swinging her legs over the bed and sitting up, anger giving her energy. “I don’t want to be. I want normal—I wanted to get away from it, everything But,” Sam paused, breath hitching. Gabriel hoped she wasn’t about to cry. He didn’t do well with crying. “If tonight’s any indication, I  _can’t_. There’s always going to be some fucking  _thing_  that comes along and screws it all up.”

And there  _it_  was.

“Oh, Sam,” he said, “Sammy. I could help you with that. You want to live it up at Stanford? Hit keggers and rush sororities and pull regretful all-nighters without fear of a vampire munching on your sisters or a coven kidnapping your roomie? I can make it happen.”

“How?” She seems surprised that she asked.

For a moment, even he’s stunned. Stunned that she’d consider making a deal with him; stunned by the force of her desire to have that normal life, even if it meant having a trickster on her shoulder.

“Just let me complete the spell,” he said. “And I’m the only supernatural thing you’ll have to worry about.”

“Why would you help me?”

“Would you believe me if I said it would alter the fate of the world?” He knelt at the bedside, leaned his torso against her legs, and lightly rested his hands over hers.

She raised her eyebrows. “No.”

“Mm, okay, then. How about if I said I hoped it would win me a spot in your bed?”

“More believable…” she said, after a startled snort. Then her face fell. “No.” She shook her head.

He could see those lessons rising up in her mind now. The rules that her father, John, had laid out for her, the ones her brother Dean had enforced time and again. You don’t make deals with things. You certainly don’t make deals with tricksters.

“I can’t,” she whispered. She met his eyes, her own wide and faintly horrified. “You shouldn’t be here.”

He rose to his feet, backed slowly away. “I told you, Sammy. I take nothing that’s not willingly given. Think about it. You’ll know how to call me.” With that, he snapped himself away from her room.

 

 

A month later, he watched—invisible to her—as she left the house in the middle of the night, boarding a bus for California. He kept tabs on the bond as she went about finalizing her enrollment, registering for classes, getting her assigned dorm and roommate. He kept an eye out as she dined with her friends and worked her shift at the coffee shop.

When several students turned up dead during the middle of her first semester and the news article (something that would have sent her dad and brother scurrying for their weapons) caught her eye, he made sure she caught a glimpse of him on campus. Two days later, he left the newspaper clipping—along with several fangs from the vampires in the nest he destroyed—in an envelope on her bed. The note he left on the pillow next to it read:  _I was in the neighborhood. I may not be next time._

It was a cheap shot.

But when she called on him a few months later, he decided it was worth it.

 

 

 


End file.
